Insights on youth media, social entertainment & digital trends.

From smartphones to 3D televisions, The Nielsen Company provides a view of the device usage and audiences in the U.S. For more, download Nielsen’s State of the Media – U.S. Audiences and Devices report (pdf).

Royal Society Publishing science journal Biology Letters is releasing a paper about the way bees use color and space to navigate between flowers. It was written by 25 co-authors, all of whom are between the ages of 8 and 10.

Really: The 25 kids, all from the Blackawton Primary School in Devon, England, designed the experiment from the ground up, and wrote every word in the paper.

The students who published the paper were participants in "i, scientist," a project set up to engage kids with science in a hands-on way. A very hands-on way.

This is a briliant and hands on way to teach kids science. Instead of sitting in classroom and listening to a teacher, these kids are getting a hands on experience that makes science move from theory into actual practice and proves that anyone can do science.

Josh Clark is a designer, developer, and author specializing in mobile design strategy and user experience. He’s the author of the O’Reilly books "Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps" and "Best iPhone Apps: The Guide for Discriminating Downloaders."

Ownership of internet-enabled handheld devices increased by more than 11 percentage points between 2009 and spring 2010, with the number of students planning to purchase such a device in the next year holding steady.

As the devices have become more common among undergraduates, they have also begun to play a bigger role in students’ lives.

In 2009, fewer than half of respondents who owned an internet-enabled handheld device said they used it at least weekly, with fewer than a third reporting daily use. By 2010, 42.6% reported using the devices every day and two-thirds did so at least once a week.

I'm totally addicited. I have dreams about Angry Birds. I tweet about Angry Birds. I have opinions on which cartoon birds I like (those awesome yellow birds) and which ones I don't (those tucan-ish birds).

For those of you living in a cave, Angry Birds is the addictive game that has become the top iPhone app in the world.

The game has over 7 million downloads and is poised to be the next big entertainment franchise. Think Sponge Bob. Mark my words, Angry Birds is going to be huge.

The one area where I disagree slightly with Houle is his use of the term "digital natives." I'm sure from his perspective and based on his conversations with CEO's and other corporate types, that Millennials in the workplace, compared to their older colleagues, appear to be super digital, technology gifted whiz kids.

Coined by author Marc
Prensky in 2001, the phrase has its usefulness in helping us adults
grasp the major media shift we're experiencing and embrace young
people's openness to it.

But two leading new-media thinkers – Sonia
Livingstone of the London School of Economics and Henry Jenkins at the
University of Southern California – both have concerns about the phrase
becoming too definitive.

Sure kids can work an iPod or update their status on Facebook, but
what about using technology in an authentic, useful context? But when it comes to using technology in a situated context to
complete a
task, navigating privacy settings and all around digital literacy, or using technology at school kids
still come
up a bit short.

As more and more people get iPads and other devices that allow them to sit on the couch and socialize with friends while watching their favorite TV shows, traditional broadcast media outlets will have to find new and interesting ways to connect viewers to their programming.

Twitter Usage In America 2010is a new report derived from the
Edison Research/Arbitron Internet and Multimedia Series. This study
presents three years of tracking data from a nationally representative
telephone survey (via landline and mobile phone) of 1,753 Americans, and
was conducted in February 2010.

The report details new data on
the awareness and usage of Twitter, along with user demographics, status
updating behaviors, brand following activity and even an early look at
location-based social networking.

51% of active Twitter users follow companies, brands or
products on social networks;

Twitter usage among African-American's hovers around 25%, more than double the percentage of African-Americans in the current US population. This could also be attributed to the fact that minority youth tend to use mobile devices to access the web and therefore are more inclined to participate in mobile social networking activities like Twitter.

The Chronicle of Higher Education had an interesting piece about a new trend on campus where students are using mobile geosocial networking platforms like Foursquare to "tag" professors, students and campus facilities with "virtual graffiti."

Some universities, like Harvard, are using Foursquare's location-based service as a way to create a "virtual tour" by leaving tips and advice at various locations around campus. This is a brilliant way to use technology to deliver an useful information to the student community.

At North Carolina State University, mobile users are able to view historical pictures of campus buildings based on where users are standing, "including a snapshot of the first freshman class, from 1890, when the agricultural college's hot mobile technology was horses."

The article cites how one student "recently used it to leave some virtual graffiti on the spot of Mr. Kratz's office: Watch out for lame jokes!" Pretty harmless stuff.

But students at other universities are using (or have the potential to use) Foursquare in some, uhm, creative ways:

Since Foursquare's debut last year, students have diligently labeled, praised, and, in some cases, profaned college campuses. Take this note, easily Googled, that somebody calling himself Mock Redneck Jr. left at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte: "The library has Free Wi-Fi, Barely Legal girls and a warm place to drop a deuce."

Now imagine this nightmare scenario: A prospective student's mother goes on a college tour. She pulls out a phone. Her expression screams oh-my-gosh as she reads Mr. Redneck's note. Maybe she goes on to a dorm, and perhaps its residents have left other goodies online. The teacher they loathed. The room they smoked pot in. The couch they had sex on.

Now none of these activities are really out of the ordinary for most college students. What is different is that they are much more public. I'm certain that at some point, some college administrator will overreact and ban Foursquare from campus. Not smart.

Foursquare tagging should be bundled in that digital media mantra from the late 90s: think before you post. Just like Facebook, Twitter and other social networking services, most likely your Foursquare check-ins and tips will follow you for life. And students should just reminded that they are leaving digital crumbs that they may not be able to clean up later in life. And privacy? That's an illusion. Or is it?

But beyond the campus tagging, this article left me wondering what the implications for brands? There's nothing stopping a group of angry environmentalists from standing outside Nestle headquarters and tagging them on Foursquare with negative tips.

For me, this raises a lot of questions. Who owns Foursquare content? Me? Or Foursquare? Will a brand have to sue Foursquare to get negative content removed? If Foursquare removes negative content, how will their community respond?

Imagine another nightmare scenario where high school kids use Foursquare to bully a classmate by tagging their victims physical location with slurs (i.e. slut, fat, stupid, whore, gay). As many of us know, teenage cruelty has no boundaries.

While it seems like social networking has been around for eons, the reality is that for the most part this is still uncharted territory and we are still trying to navigate the pitfalls of this new world.

I'm the first to admit that at this point I don't have all the answers. The one thing I do know is that when these things do happen, and they will, we shouldn't overreact.

Remember textbooks? Yeah. Forget about textbooks. Students at Seton Hill University are all getting iPads and access to all their textbooks on the iBook store. I’d say it’s one of the biggest changes in pedagogy since the move from the one-room schoolhouse.

Check out Seton Hill’s website. It states, in no uncertain terms, that
“Beginning in the fall of 2010, all first year undergraduate students at
Seton Hill will receive a 13″ MacBook laptop and an iPad.”

Can you
imagine? I remember I was about to go to Clarkson University in New York
back in 1993 because they were giving out laptops. But a MacBook and an
iPad? That’s like getting a pony and a unicorn.

Miley's "Last Song" Webcast: Miley Cyrus, Greg Kinnear and Liam Hemsworth, stars of the upcoming film "The Last Song", will host a live chat on UStream Saturday, March 13 @4pm Eastern/1pm Pacific. [Ustream]

3/13/10 Update: Here's the recording of the webcast with Miley Cyrus and the cast of "The Last Song." [Facebook]

A "Wizard of Oz" remake? Say it ain't so!: Fresh off Disney's massive success with Tim Burton's "Alice in
Wonderland," Warner Bros. wants to remake another childhood classic.
Like, really classic. The studio is examining two existing "Wizard of Oz" projects, with an
eye toward giving one of them a modern gloss and moving it toward the
screen. [LA TIMES]

Rapid Rise of Children with Cellphones: Though girls still have more cellphones than boys — 21.8 percent of
girls have them, compared with 18.3 percent of boys — that gap is about
half as large as it was in 2005. Most of the children surveyed who had
cellphones were 10 or 11 years old; Mediamark reported that 36.1 percent
of children in that age range had phones. [NYT]

TEDxTeen has curated a lineup of international youth
(sprinkled with some compelling adults who made big waves as teens) who
are tackling the big questions and big problems with passion and action.
What are teens across the globe doing to make a difference? You might
be surprised! [TEDxTeen]

11 Steps Toward A Content Strategy: IBM recently published research showing that about 80 percent of those who begin a corporate blog never post more than five entries. And that's just blogging. The Internet is littered with near-tweetless
Twitter accounts, expressionless Facebook pages, no-one-home YouTube
channels. In the rush to adopt social media as a tactic, too many
marketers leave strategy in the dust. [eConsultancy]

Five Ways to Use Twitter to Avoid a Backchannel Disaster: What do you do when you’re giving a presentation, and notice that your
audience is looking down, busily typing on their laptops and
smartphones? And what about when you get the sense that they are
turning against you? To short-circuit a possible disaster, keep in mind these five things you
can do to prepare and engage the backchannel. [Mashable]